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Risk It!

Who's Foolin' Who

Written by: PP on 09/08/2012 08:21:31

If you're into testosterone fueled hardcore, you might want to check out Risk It! from Dresden, Germany, whose debut album "Who's Foolin' Who" combines the best of Terror and Trapped Under Ice into a down-tuned, two-step friendly form of hardcore done by the books. And when I say done by the books, I mean it's done exactly according to the ABCs of the genre, but with enough urgency and immediacy to immediately strike its listener as a powerful hardcore release despite its non-existent originality.

Basically, Risk It! provide a moshable form of hardcore complete with yelled vocals and serious lyrics, which is arguably a very stereotypical sound on paper, but the difference maker for Risk It! is their energy levels, their passion, and their ability to make generic hardcore song structures jump at you on record. It's an album written with the live show in mind as is typical in the genre (it's very fist-pump friendly), but the band vary their songwriting enough and make their aggression felt in a much more convincing manner than many of their contemporary peers, perhaps due to its unassuming and unadulterated nature. Yeah, there are power chants, gang vocals, and all the rage, but a song like "Snakes On Our Side" demonstrates a quality of songwriting simply not found within many of their peers within the monotone hardcore style. Technically, that's what Risk It! belong to as well, and it's hard to point a finger at exactly one thing that they do better than the rest of the group, but "Who's Fooling Who" essentially provides a wealth of great hardcore songs that betray your preconceptions of the genre because a) they sound different from each other, and b) they carry a distinct in-your-face energy coupled with reasonably memorable songwriting that make them more than just testosterone fueled hardcore songs.

In the end, "Who's Foolin' Who" isn't the album to attract more fans to hardcore or the record to change your mind if you don't like the genre in the first place. It is, however, a surprisingly strong and impressive record in a crowded genre that manages to stay afloat above a whole lot of its contemporaries who sound identical to each other. Risk It! might be the most criminally underrated hardcore band in Germany right now, if not in all of Europe, so if you're a fan of the genre, here's your chance to get ahead of the curve before these guys blow up.

Download: Snakes On Our Side
For the fans of: Terror, Trapped Under Ice , Lionheart, No Turning Back, Backtrack
Listen: Bandcamp

Release date 14.04.2012
Farewell Records